In some cases, you might find that you need to move your files, be it due to simple reorganization, possibly to reinstall Windows, or maybe even to move µTorrent and all the torrent jobs along with their contents to a new computer. In any case, the process is simple, though it can turn out to be a lengthy one. Realize that along the way, you might lose your accumulated statistics for each torrent job, but that does not mean you lose the statistics on the associated trackers, so do not fret about that.
Reinstalling Your Operating System
In the simplest of cases, reinstalling your operating system only requires you to make a backup of the data onto a new drive or partition if the torrent contents and µTorrent settings directory are located on the same drive or partition as the operating system you are trying to reinstall. After everything is completed, you simply have to move the files back to their previous locations, and µTorrent will resume everything without issue. If you did not have an encapsulated "installation" of µTorrent, then make sure you have the same username before moving the settings directory back into %AppData%. If you are unable to perform any of the above, you will have to take the long route of performing the migration as if you were really moving the torrent contents.
Moving to a New Computer
Migrating µTorrent to a new computer simply requires that you copy your files to your new hard drive, along with backing up the entire µTorrent settings directory. The most difficult part of this process comes with the placement of the µTorrent directory and the torrent contents. If you want to complete the process with minimal effort, it becomes a simple matter of making sure the paths for all the files related to µTorrent and the torrent contents on the new computer are identical to the respective paths on the old computer.
- If you had an encapsulated "installation" of µTorrent, an identical username is not necessary. Otherwise, if the µTorrent settings directory was located in %AppData%\uTorrent, then you will have to create a user with the same exact account name on the new computer as on the old computer, then move the µTorrent settings directory into the proper location on disk.
- If you plan on moving the drive over to the new computer, then as long as the drive letter remains the same, you save yourself the headache of dealing with paths. Otherwise, if you're going to copy the files from the old drive to the new drive, then you should make sure the torrent contents' paths remain identical.
If any of those tips fail, and you are unable to keep paths identical for either the settings directory or the torrent contents, then you're in for a very long ride, and will have to perform everything as if you had moved the torrent contents.
Moving Torrent Contents
This process, if you haven't already figured it out, might require the most amount of time out of any of the "migration" processes, as it might require that you allow µTorrent to verify the data integrity of the torrent contents after the move. What's time consuming isn't really the procedure itself, but the fact that rechecking can take a lot of time, depending on the torrent contents' sizes, and how many different torrent jobs you want to move. All that's needed when you're moving torrent contents is that you stop the torrent job in µTorrent, move the torrent contents to wherever you need them to be, set the download location for each associated torrent job for the moved contents, and start the torrent job. If µTorrent doesn't recognize the existing data, stop the torrent job and force re-check for each relevant torrent job.